Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid will both travel to Washington next week to attend the funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, with Netanyahu also slated to hold a high-level meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House during the visit.

The Prime Minister’s Office announced Friday that Netanyahu will meet with Trump on Tuesday, marking the two leaders’ first face-to-face talks since the war with Iran erupted on February 28. Trump later confirmed that the meeting will take place.

According to a source familiar with the plans, Netanyahu is expected to depart for Washington on Monday and return to Israel on Wednesday.

In addition to his White House meeting, Netanyahu’s itinerary includes attending a memorial service honoring Graham, the longtime Republican senator and outspoken supporter of Israel, who died suddenly earlier this month.

A source familiar with the matter also told The Times of Israel that Opposition Leader Yair Lapid will travel to Washington to participate in Graham’s memorial service.

Trump publicly confirmed Netanyahu’s upcoming visit during remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, where he again mocked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“I am going to send him (Schumer) a beautiful Palestinian outfit tomorrow, so he can greet Bibi Netanyahu when he comes to town next week,” Trump said.

“He turned Palestinian,” Trump said of Schumer, who is Jewish, while also joking that sharia law was Schumer’s “new founding.”

The possibility of a Washington meeting was first discussed during a phone conversation between Trump and Netanyahu on July 3.

Following Graham’s death on July 11, Netanyahu announced that he intended to travel to the United States for the funeral and hoped to meet with Trump while there. However, reports indicated that the White House initially delayed finalizing a meeting amid concerns over Netanyahu’s declining standing among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

According to those reports, some Trump advisers also worried that if the United States launched another major military operation against Iran shortly after hosting Netanyahu, critics would once again argue that Washington had been drawn into the conflict at Israel’s urging.

The two leaders last met at the White House on February 11, when Netanyahu reportedly urged Trump in the Situation Room to join Israel in a renewed military campaign against Iran. During that meeting, Netanyahu is said to have argued that Iran’s ballistic missile program could be eliminated within weeks, that Tehran would be too weakened to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, that it would be unable to mount significant attacks against American forces in neighboring countries, and that the regime itself was vulnerable to collapse with assistance from Kurdish forces operating from Iraq.

Less than three weeks later, the United States and Israel launched a joint military campaign against Iran.

Trump is now weighing whether to authorize another large-scale operation after the memorandum of understanding signed last month to end the conflict unraveled amid renewed disputes over control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Although the President has repeatedly threatened strikes against Iran’s energy infrastructure, he has thus far refrained from ordering them because of concerns that additional aerial attacks may prove no more effective than previous operations in changing Tehran’s behavior.

Netanyahu had originally hoped to visit Washington earlier this week, but his office announced that the trip was postponed after Graham’s funeral was reportedly rescheduled for next week.

The timing of Netanyahu’s visit may also signal that an immediate escalation by the United States against Iran is unlikely, despite Trump’s repeated warnings toward the Iranian regime.

{Matzav.com}